This study examines the concept of the evolution of electricity sector in Tanzania.Electrification of Africa has raised large discussion and thus, nine scenarios based ondifferent production pathways and demand projections are formulated. The studyconsiders both grid based centralized electricity and decentralized power production.The main differentiation is between a centralized electricity system and decentralizedpower that are closer to demand. A model is created using three modeling tools(Answer-OSeMOSYS, LEAP and MESSAGE) and the results are presented andcompared. Finally, different funding options for electricity expansion projects inTanzania are explored in order to investigate the feasibility of the scenarios as well asa geopolitical analysis is carried out.

Smartphones are used today to accomplish a variety of different tasks, but it has some issues that might be solved with new technology. Augmented Reality is a developing technology that in the future can be used in our daily lives to solve some of the problems that smartphones have. Before people will adopt the new augmented technology it is important to have an intuitive method to interact with it. Hand gesturing has always been a vital part of human interaction. Using hand gestures to interact with devices has the potential to be a more natural and familiar method than traditional methods, such as keyboards, controllers, and computer mice. The aim of this thesis is to explore whether hand gesture recognition in an Augmented Reality head-mounted display can provide the same interaction possibilities as a smartphone touchscreen. This was done by implementing an application in Unity that mimics an interface of a smartphone, but uses hand gestures as input in AR. The Leap Motion Controller was the device used to perform hand gesture recognition. To test how practical hand gestures are as an interaction method, text typing was chosen as the task to be used to measure this, as it is used in many applications on smartphones. Thus, the results can be better generalized to real world usage.Five different keyboards were designed and tested in a pilot study. A controlled experiment was conducted, in which 12 participants tried two hand gesturing keyboards and a touchscreen keyboard. This was done to compare how hand gestures compare to touchscreen interaction. In the experiment, participants wrote words using the keyboards, while their completion time and accuracy was recorded. After using a keyboard, a questionnaire was completed by the participants to measure the usability.  The results consists of an implementation of five different keyboards, and data collected from the experiment. The data gathered from the experiment consists of completion time, accuracy, and usability derived from questionnaire responses. Statistical tests were used to determine statistical significance between the keyboards used in the experiment. The results are presented in graphs and tables. The results show that typing with pinch gestures in augmented reality is a slow and tiresome way of typing and affects the users completion time and accuracy negatively, in relation to using a touchscreen. The lower completion time, and higher usability, of the touchscreen keyboard could be determined with statistical significance. Prediction and auto-completion might help with fatigue as fewer key presses are needed to create a word. The research concludes that hand gestures are reasonable to use as input technique to accomplish certain tasks that a smartphone performs. These include simple tasks such as scrolling through a website or opening an email. However, tasks that involve typing long sentences, e.g. composing an email, is arduous using pinch gestures. When it comes to typing, the authors advice developers to employ a continuous gesture typing approach such as Swype for Android and iOS.

There are different ways to interact with different hardware, therefore it is important to have an understanding about what factors that affect the experience when designing interactions and interfaces. This study focuses on exploring how auditory and vibrotactile feedback are perceived by the users when they interact in a virtual AR environment. An application was developed to the AR glasses Magic Leap with different interactions, both passive and active. An experimental study was conducted with 28 participants that got to interact in this virtual environment. The study included two parts. First the participants interacted in the virtual environment where they did a think aloud. Thereafter they were interviewed. There were a total of three test cases. One with only auditory feedback, one with vibrotactile feedback, and a third that had both auditory and vibrotactile feedback. Seven of the 28 participants acted as a control group that did not have any feedback to their interactions. The study shows that using only vibrotactile feedback creates different impressions depending on earlier experiences with the same AR environment. Using only auditory feedback created an atmosphere that were close to reality. Having both feedbacks active at the same time reduced the noticed feedback and some interactions were here not even noticed at all. Passive interactions were more noticed than active interactions in all cases. / Det finns flera olika sätt att interagera med olika hårdvaror och därför är det viktigt att ha en förståelse kring vilka faktorer som påverkar upplevelsen när man designar för diverse gränssnitt och interaktioner. Den här studien fokuserar på att utforska hur auditiv och vibrationsåterkoppling uppfattas av användaren när de interagerar i en virtuell AR-miljö. En applikation var utvecklad till AR-glasögonen Magic Leap One med olika aktiva och passiva interaktioner.En experimentell studie genomfördes med 28 deltagare som fick interagera i en virtuell miljö. Studien bestod av av två delar. Först fick deltagarna interagera i en virtuell miljö där de gjorde en think aloud. Efter detta blev de intervjuade. Det var totalt tre testfall, ett hade endast auditiv återkoppling, ett hade vibrationsåterkoppling och det sista hade både auditiv och vibrationsåterkoppling. Sju av de 28 deltagarna agerade kontrollgrupp och de hade ingen återkoppling på deras interaktioner.Studien visade att bara använda vibrationsåterkoppling skapade olika intryck beroende på de tidigare erfarenheterna i samma AR-miljö. Att endast använda auditiv återkoppling skapade en atmosfär som vara nära verkligheten. Att ha båda återkopplingarna aktiva samtidigt reducerade den totala märkta återkopplingen och några interaktioner hade inte någon person som noterade någon av dem. Passiva interaktioner var mer uppmärksammade än aktiva interaktioner i alla testfallen.

L’amour, la mort et la souffrance sont parmi les expériences les plus incompréhensibles que l’homme doit affronter dans sa vie. Elles définissent sa nature et font partie intégrante de son univers symbolique. Le saut de Leucade aurait été pratiqué pendant plus de mille ans. À la fois présent dans les récits mythiques, religieux et historiques, le rituel est attesté par les premiers historiens de l’Antiquité qui décrivent ce phénomène à partir des données de l’historiographie antique. La forme traditionnelle du saut s’inscrit dans l’univers mythologique des Grecs et le plongeon est un acte de délivrance de la passion amoureuse. La nature du rituel change selon les contextes littéraires, passant d’un rite érotique à un rituel apotropaïque pour se voir perpétuer de manière désacralisée dans les récits plus tardifs. L’analyse des différentes fonctions du saut semble démontrer le profil d’une expérience limite, où la mort serait vécue de manière métaphorique et pose le problème de la nature ordalique du rituel qui serait à la base de son efficacité pragmatique. Cette étude projette d’analyser les formes de la pensée grecque dans son expression anthropologique à travers la dialectique du mythe et du rite et vise à comprendre l’interprétation de la souffrance amoureuse dans le cadre du rituel de précipitation. Le saut de Leucade serait dès lors un discours spécifique qui témoignerait d’une certaine conception de la nature humaine, de la mort et de la souffrance amoureuse dans l’imaginaire de la Grèce ancienne. / Love, death and suffering are among some of the most incomprehensible experiences confronting man during his life. They define his nature and make up an integral part of his symbolic universe. The Leucadian Leap is deemed to have been practiced for more than a thousand years. Appearing in mythical, religious as well as in historical narratives, the ritual is attested by the first historians in Antiquity who explain this phenomenon from the data of the antique historiography. The traditional meaning of the leap is inscribed in Greek mythological context and the leap is thus relief from passionate love. The nature of the ritual changes according to literary contexts, from a purely erotic rite, to a apotropaic rite, to see it being perpetuated in a deconsecrated manner in later texts. Analysis of the different functions of the leap seem to point toward an extreme death-defying experience where death was experienced in a metaphorical manner and provides a hypothesis for the ritual’s ordalic nature as a basis for its pragmatic efficiency. This study purports to analyze the Greek mental forms as expressed anthropologically through the dialectic of myth and ritual and aims at understanding the interpretation of love suffering within the context of a leaping ritual in Ancient Greece. The Leucadian Leap would thus appear to correspond to a specific discourse which would testify to a certain conception of human nature, of death, of love and of suffering in Ancient Greece’s collective imagination.

This work takes as its central issue the existential movement as it appears in the philosophy of Soren Kierkegaard. There appears to be relatively little secondary literature on this topic, so it is a very fruitful area to explore. The texts explored include Kierkegaard's 'psychological' books, in particular Concept of Anxiety and Sickness unto Death. These provide our work with the crucial concepts of innocence, guilt, despair, anxiety, existence and spirit. From the more traditional philosophical works, Philosophical Fragments, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments and Johannes Climacus have been utilised. These texts inform the work mostly on the meaning of movement, doubt, contradiction and absolute paradox. From the more lyrical works, this work is informed by Fear and Trembling and Repetition. Inquiry into these texts combined will provide a picture of existential movement as it is presented by Kierkegaard. This work attempts to capture the 'becoming subjective' which is so central to Kierkegaard's thought, through the reconstruction of the existential stages. It is also the purpose of this work (in the process) to treat areas of Kierkegaard's thought that are usually left untreated. The latter are for example, the problematic of the leap of sin, the unclear status of the...

As part of efforts to curb the protracted electricity problem in Nigeria, the government enacted the National Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Policy (NREEEP) in 2014. Through this policy, the country plans to increase its electricity generation from renewables to 20% by 2030. This thesis investigates the economic feasibility of this lofty goal, and as well determine the best hybrid configuration for off-grid rural/remote power generation across the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria The economic feasibility results, using Long-range Energy Alternative Planning (LEAP) tool, show that the 20% renewables goal in the Nigerian power generation mix by 2030 is economically feasible but will require vast investment, appropriate supportive mechanisms, both fiscal and non-fiscal (especially for solar PV) and unalloyed commitment on the part of the government. Moreover, the techno-economic results with Hybrid Optimization Model for Electric Renewable (HOMER) reveal Small hydro/Solar PV/Diesel generator/Battery design as the most cost-effective combination for power supply in remote/rural areas of Nigeria. Findings also highlight the better performance of this system in terms of fuel consumption and GHGs emission reduction. Lastly, the study identifies factors influencing RE development, and offers strategic and policy suggestions to advance RE deployment in Nigeria.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T18:14:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Gilmar Pereira da Silva.pdf: 3720753 bytes, checksum: 965b4fd78fbb8eaac6f442d2f1e30e27 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-12-09 / By means of a sincronic and diacronic approach, the present study attempts to analize humor as an interpretation of reality attentive to its finite character, by way of humoristic images, and more specifically, in those images circumscribed by the space of the web. For this, the investigation was centered in a bibliographic revision and in the analysis of the humoristic blog Kibe Loco. Taking as principal theoretical references Søren Aabye Kierkagaard and Walter Benjamin, the notion of humor was studied as a way of signifying reality that which would favor an existencial leap, according to the first author and as a dialectical image as a historical category that would provoke a waking up according to the second in order to observe the function of humoristic images in digital medias. In this way, it was sought to comprehend the extent to which dialectical images would contribute to the referred leap and waking up , qualitative changes in the relation of the individual with herself and with society as a whole, always making the comparison with the diverse humoristic production of the blog. The first chapter is centered on humor; the second on the image, above all humoristic images; the third chapter combines the theories of the first two with the hypertextual writing of digital platforms / Por meio de uma abordagem sincrônica e diacrônica, o presente trabalho busca analisar o humor como modo de significação da realidade, bem como as imagens humorísticas e, mais especificamente, as circunscritas ao espaço web. Para tanto, a pesquisa centrou-se em revisão bibliográfica e na análise do blog humorístico Kibe Loco. Tomando como referenciais teóricos principais Søren Aabye Kierkegaard e Walter Benjamin, partiu-se da noção de humor como modo de leitura da realidade atenta aos seus aspectos de finitude que favoreceria um salto existencial , conforme o primeiro e de imagem dialética como categoria histórica que suscitaria o despertar , conforme o segundo para observar o funcionamento das imagens humorísticas em mídias digitais. Desse modo, buscou-se compreender em que medida as imagens humorísticas poderiam ser compreendidas como imagens dialéticas e, por tanto, contribuiriam aos referidos salto e despertar , mudanças qualitativas na relação do indivíduo consigo e com a sociedade, sempre cotejando com a diversificada produção humorística do blog. O primeiro capítulo centra-se no humor; o segundo na imagem, sobretudo as humorísticas; o terceiro conjuga as teorias dos dois primeiros com a escrita hipertextual das plataformas digitais

Although upper limb motor impairments are common, the primary tools for assessing and tracking these impairments in a clinical setting are subjective, qualitative rating scales that lack resolution and repeatability. Markerless motion capture technology has the potential to greatly improve clinical assessment by providing quick, low-cost, and accurate tools to objectively quantify motor deficits. Here we lay some of the groundwork necessary to enable markerless motion capture systems to be used in clinical settings. First, we adapted five motor tests common in clinical assessments so they can be administered via markerless motion capture. We implemented these modified tests using a particular motion capture sensor (Leap MotionTM Controller, hereafter referred to as the Leap Motion sensor) and administered the tests to 100 healthy subjects to evaluate the feasibility of administrating these tests via markerless motion capture. Second, to determine the ability of the Leap Motion sensor to accurately measure tremor, we characterized the frequency response of the Leap Motion sensor. During the administration of the five modified motor tests on 100 healthy subjects, the subjects had little trouble interfacing with the Leap Motion sensor and graphical user interface, performing the tasks with ease. The Leap Motion sensor maintained an average sampling rate above 106 Hz across all subjects during each of the five tests. The rate of adverse events caused by the Leap Motion sensor (mainly jumps in time or space) was generally below 1%. In characterizing the frequency response of the Leap Motion sensor, we found its bandwidth to vary between 1.7 and 5.5 Hz for actual tremor amplitudes above 1.5 mm, with larger bandwidth for larger amplitudes. To improve the accuracy of tremor measurements, we provide the magnitude ratios that can be used to estimate the actual amplitude of the oscillations from the measurements by the Leap Motion sensor. These results suggest that markerless motion capture systems are on the verge of becoming suitable for routine clinical use, but more work is necessary to further improve the motor tests before they can be administered via markerless motion capture with sufficient robustness for clinical settings.

In its theoretical part, this thesis treats possibilities of using no-touch technology Leap Motion in elementary school lessons for operating interactive applications focused on physics education. The thesis investigates the ways in which it is possible to operate already published applications which are not programmed specifically for a no-touch technology and which are, however, intended for work with an interactive whiteboard or for a standard computer work. Their advantages and disadvantages are discussed as well. The thesis deals, among other things, with the availability of relevant applications and offers a summary of information about Leap Motion technology and of opportunities for replacing interactive whiteboards. The thesis also includes a description of the technology and of the potential for developing your own applications. The aim of the practical part is to create a new didactic application which will be tested in lessons. This part also includes a poll which will find out what is the interest in Leap Motion technology among teachers.

Object tracking has become really important in the field of robotics in the last years. Frequently, the goal is to obtain the trajectory of the tracked target over time and space by acquiring and processing information from the sensors. In this thesis we are interested in tracking objects at a very short range. The primary application of our approach is targeting the domain of object tracking during grasp execution with a hand-in-eye sensor setup. To this end, a promising approach investigated in this work is based on the Leap Motion sensor, which is designed for tracking human hands. However, we are interested in tracking grasped objects thus we need to extend its functionality. The main goal of the thesis is to track the 3D position and orientation of an object from a set of simple primitives (cubes, cylinders, triangles) over a video sequence. That is the reason we have designed and developed two different approaches for tracking objects with the Leap Motion device as stereo vision system.